The Landmine Factory Next Door…

Exposing the Military Industrial Complex in Wisconsin

“Much of defense spending is in high-tech, in pilotless planes and smart weapons, which really are not researched and developed in Wisconsin.  If we had another Gulf War and there were 500,000 troops being sent to the desert and they needed trucks – with many being destroyed – Oshkosh Truck may get a little boost.”  - Jim Simmons, Chair of the Political Science Dept. of UW-Oshkosh quoted in the Post-Crescent, 9/8/2002 
 

“I don’t know if a war would be positive or negative for us.  People think, ‘You’ll sell a lot more military trucks,’ or ‘You’ll have a lot more parts support.’ … When there is a war, we make sure there is an increased emphasis on maintenance and service and getting parts out right away.  It’s not uncommon for us to take parts off the assembly line and immediately ship them to wherever those trucks need to be serviced, like we’ve done in Afghanistan.”  - remarks of Oshkosh Trucks CEO, Robert Bohn, to the annual shareholders meeting on Feb. 4, 2003 
 

When one visualizes the military industrial complex and its deadly assembly lines, one does not normally think of a pastoral setting like Wisconsin.  Yet, like Saruman’s sinister foundries depicted in the “Lord of the Rings,” we have a vast homegrown war machine humming along in the very heart of the Upper Midwest.  In October 2002 when Congress approved an unprecedented $355 billion porkbarrel Pentagon budget, $129 million in fresh contracts were awarded to WI-based corporations.  Some of the major beneficiaries of this taxpayer largesse as reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (10/11/02) include:  $68.4 million for Oshkosh Truck (Oshkosh), $8.5 million for Silicon Graphics (Chippewa Falls), $6.9 million for Trak International (Port Washington), $5.3 million for Ladish Company (Cudahy), and $3.5 million for Eaton Corporation (Milwaukee).  A recent Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request has revealed a similar upsurge in Pentagon work at UW-Madison with millions of dollars worth of active contracts scattered across the campus. 
 

Some case studies should provide a shocking glimpse into the belly of the beast that has come to dwell among us… 
 

Oshkosh Truck (Oshkosh) - CEO Robert Bohn

2307 Oregon St., Oshkosh, WI  54903  tel. #920-235-9150  www.oshkoshtruck.com 
 

With $1.4 billion in sales in 2001, Oshkosh Truck is by far the biggest Pentagon contractor in the state of Wisconsin.  Since WWII, it has built over 30,000 military vehicles, and according to the company’s webpage “with every vehicle, a little bit of the Valley and America goes with it.”  Better yet, it sells these sturdy vehicles to other armies from Britain and Israel to Egypt and Taiwan, which helped Oshkosh Truck win the “Export Achievement Award” from Gov. Thompson in May 2000.  A company profile even appeared in the Turkish Daily News (2/4/2001) with a flattering paraphrase from Oshkosh Truck vice president, Ted Henson, about Turks being proud dignified and tolerant people who live in peace and treat their minorities in a brotherly fashion.  The Kurds would certainly disagree.  Full 24 hour service by qualified in-house technicians is part of these lucrative weapons packages, and Oshkosh Truck mechanics were part of the human baggage train in Bosnia keeping the Pentagon mobile. 
 

Among the more popular products sold by Oshkosh Truck are Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks (HEMTTs), Heavy Equipment Transporters (HETs), and Medium Tactical Vehicle Replacements (MTVRs).  Both HEMTTs and MTVRs are easily transported in C-130 cargo planes and include such high-tech features as Command Zone electronics and Pro-Pulse hybrid drives.  In May 2001 Oshkosh Truck completed a $ 8 million factory expansion, enabling it to assemble up to nine MTVRs per day – just in time for the latest influx of military orders.  Oshkosh Truck is now vying for an even bigger $13 billion Pentagon contract to supply the U.S. Army’s entire Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTVs).  To encourage future orders rolling in, Oshkosh Truck hosted a $3,000 breakfast for the Wisconsin delegation at the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.  When Clinton’s defense budget neglected to include enough money for Oshkosh Trucks, Sen. Kohl (D-WI), who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, simply tacked on $160 million (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 1/21/1996). 
 

Accudyne (Janesville) - Pres. Michael Coyle

2643 W. Court St., Janesville, WI  53547  tel. #608-752-4053  www.atk.com 
 

Janesville-based Accudyne was purchased back in 1993 by defense giant, Alliant Techsystems (ATK), with its headquarters in MN.  Accudyne is probably most infamous for its role in making landmines, having received a whopping $150 million worth of Pentagon contracts between 1985 and 1995.  In June 1995 Accudyne also settled a $12 million lawsuit for submitting false claims to the Pentagon and dumping wastes in violation of the Clean Water Act.  Despite this track record of corporate malfeasance, Gov Thompson came to the rescue in November 1996 with a $1.25 million state bailout package when Accudyne threatened to close its Janesville landmine factory.  In his self-congratulatory press release, Thompson stated “we have the greatest workers in the country right here in Wisconsin, and I’m glad Accudyne appreciates the high quality of our workforce.”  Held hostage throughout the negotiation were 250 union jobs in an economically depressed community that has already endured massive corporate downsizing and post-NAFTA factory flight to Mexico. 
 

Among the “high quality” items produced by Accudyne are the likes of MOPMS, Volcano and GATOR landmines.  A principle component of cluster bombs, GATOR landmines were widely scattered throughout Iraq during the Gulf War, in Kosovo during the Balkan War, and most recently dumped among innocent civilians in Afghanistan – where they were insidiously similar in color and shape to air-dropped humanitarian food packets. Exemplifying the cozy revolving door between defense contractors and the White House, Alliant Techsystems welcomed former U.S. Ambassador to Oman and State Dept. Liaison to the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Somalia and Bosnia, Frances D. Cook, to its board of directors in January 2000. Also in step with the pro-landmine policies of the Clinton/Bush administrations, Accudyne President, Michael Coyle’s August 1, 2000 letter to anti-landmine activists refused to renounce future production, citing the need to provide “our soldiers with technology and products that enable them to accomplish their missions.” By October 2002 Alliant had won another $53.8 million Pentagon contract to begin work on a fresh generation of “smart” landmines designed to circumvent the global landmine ban treaty.  
 

University of Wisconsin (Madison) - Chancellor John Wiley

500 Lincoln Dr. Rm. #161, Madison, WI  53706  tel. #608-262-9946  www.wisc.edu 
 

Supplying the science and rhetoric behind the military industrial complex are public schools such as UW-Madison.  As a land grant college, UW-Madison was actually one of the pioneers of the universal military draft system.  In Oct. 2001 Bascom Hall received a generous $21.7 million bequest from the estate of the late UW-Madison Bacteriology Professor, Ira Baldwin - a leader in anthrax research and scientific director of the U.S. Biological Weapons Program during WWII.  Unfortunately, the infected livestock carcasses that died at UW-Madison and were casually buried on the shores of Lake Mendota during a 1909 anthrax outbreak have yet to be located and safely removed from campus.   In 1967 when Dow Chemical – the maker of napalm – sent recruiters to the UW-Madison campus, the resulting police crackdown against peaceful protesters triggered fierce resistance, captured in the powerful documentary “The War at Home.”  The key role of the Army Math Research Center (AMRC) in developing the mathematical models behind increased artillery “kill efficiency”  for the Vietnam War actually led to the bombing of UW’s Sterling Hall by the “New Year’s Gang”  in 1970.  Less well known is the fact that AMRC relocated to the WI Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) building and continued to operate at UW-Madison until 1985.  Lobbying by UW’s top brass to win back the AMRC - renamed “The Center for Excellence in Mathematics” - from Cornell Univ. in 1990 were unsuccessful.   
 

Today the Pentagon iceberg still lurks below UW-Madison’s tranquil academic surface.  Between 1994 and 1996 UW-Madison Engineering Professor, John Gubner, was awarded $322,000 in taxpayer money through the U.S. Office of Naval Research for “Minefield Modelling.”  Another UW-Madison Engineering Professor, Parameswaren Ramanathan, received a $725,000 five year grant to develop a wireless ad hoc surveillance system, building on previous work done for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).  More DARPA money has gone to UW-Madison for video-based virtual surveillance (http://www.cs.wisc.edu/vsam/), especially useful in these times of biometric “terrorist” identification.  The Badger crowd at Camp Randall could provide a ready test subject given the recent installation of numerous surveillance cameras there.   As part of the new “cluster hiring” initiative to attract “top flight faculty” to UW-Madison, a cross disciplinary team of UW-Madison professors received $1.2 million from the U.S. Army to develop a working quantum computer.  Another batch of UW-Madison researchers fetched another $1 million from the Pentagon to develop hypernetic computers for the Star Wars program, involving the grafting of DNA strands onto metal plates.  A brave new world akin to that portrayed in the movie the “Matrix” may not be that far off. 
 
 
 

While it is important for peace activists to oppose and resist violence whenever and wherever it rears its ugly head, it is even more critical to stop the vicious cycle of state terrorism in the first place.  One obvious preventative approach towards insuring a peaceful tomorrow is by identifying and targeting the military industrial complex in Wisconsin’s own backyard.  The economic conversion of factories and democratic reclamation of universities is entirely feasible – indeed, there are historic examples of societies successfully mobilizing to discard belligerent policies and abolish entire armies.  This means building effective grassroots coalitions, though, with organized labor, concerned researchers, and even military personnel - many of who have become sadly dependent upon the Pentagon for not only their identity but their very livelihood.  The first step is to respect people as human beings and realize that their role in whatever corporation or institution they may be currently serving is not necessarily reflective of their own personal beliefs.  Once one has built some trust and found common ground, then the goal becomes finding a nonviolent alternative to “business as usual.”  With enough critical mass and creative energy, it is possible to turn landmines into windmills. 
 

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in a final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  This world in arms is not spending money alone.  It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower 
 

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death … our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.”  - Martin Luther King Jr. 
 

This factsheet produced by the UW Infoshop (union jobshop IWW I.U. 620),

31 Univ. Sq., Madison WI  53715  #608-262-9036  www.sit.wisc.edu/~infoshop

in conjunction with the Corporate Accountability Task Group (CATG) of theWisconsin Network for Peace and Justice (WNPJ), 122 State St. #404, Madison, WI 53703

#608-250-9240  www.mindspring.com/~wnpj and support of the A.J. Muste Foundation